


Collecting Darwin's Dues

by recrudescence



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 20:47:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he was arrested, all of us thought he'd lost his mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collecting Darwin's Dues

**Author's Note:**

> Written because I got to wondering what might have happened if Simon crossed paths with someone from his old life.

A little washed-out, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else—home on Osiris, a roach-infested room someplace on the Rim, a grimy closet with a friendly noose—but it was him.

Studious Simon, a quiet fraternity boy accepted for his pedigree and money, respected for both but still a little too serious for his own good.

The first time he was arrested, all of us thought he’d lost his mind.

“What’re you doing here?”

He turned towards me, started, and told the truth: “I’ve been running.”

His face was being bulletined everywhere along with the reward sum; there was no sense in lying. “I’m still running and I can’t let them catch my sister again.”

The storefronts before us were bulging with scarves and jackets; I thought of teasing him for not taking on a better disguise—crisp shirt, expensive coat, hair combed and parted, just the same as he’d always dressed before. “Whatever you’re doing, it seems to be treating you well.”

“Please,” he said stoically. “I don’t have the time for this.”

“I remember. Hippocrates. You can be a good time when you let yourself.”

He smiled thinly. “That was a very long time ago.” It hadn’t been.

Hippocrates. I’d been across the table, eyeing them through a veil of saké, watching pale severe Simon grinning with his face flushed pink, chattering and letting loose. Caralina had been flirting with him, and for once he didn’t fumble or demur. Smoking shishah and sipping drinks, doctors destroying the temples of our bodies just for one night. Sloppy kisses between newly-minted surgeons. Marchan buying a dancer’s services for Clarence as a joke, the whole group of us fleeing the bar before we were ejected for disrupting it. Simon had been laughing until it looked like he might cry, stripping off with the rest of us when we made it to the fountain in the plaza.

“Your sister, is she with you?”

“She’s somewhere safe,” was all he said, clipped and unspecific. Of course.

“Relax, for God’s sake.” I lifted my hands as if he might pat me down for weapons. “As if I need the money. You’re not worth _that_ much.” The last part, of course, was a lie and we both knew it, but I saw his head dip in a faint nod all the same.

Bernadette, a central planet swarming with Alliance, and if he knew what was good for him he shouldn’t have been there at all; he said as much himself, then stopped, evidently leery of giving anything away. I had no idea of knowing whether he was on his own or meeting a contact, could only deduce that he must not have come here of his own accord and therefore must be traveling with someone. That or maybe a rendezvous had fallen through and he was in the process of arranging an alternative. He’d always been more intelligent than any of us; he would find his way in the end, I had no doubt in my mind as to that.

Truthfully, I never knew him very well, just through a few mutual friends and courses, just enough to know he was smart and stubborn and gorgeous. Just enough to tell how badly he needed relief and how adamantly he would refuse to admit it.

“There was a seminar at my uncle’s hospital yesterday. I’m flying out tomorrow. Still have a room booked across the street.” I nodded towards the imitation-marble façade.

Simon paused, looking almost surprised, then maybe grateful, as if uncertain whether I was mocking him. “I shouldn’t.”

It was a reasonable answer. “No Alliance crouching in wait, I promise. Keep my tracker if you’re worried.” I handed it to him. He passed a hand over his mouth, then began to follow me.

“They were hurting River,” he murmured as we stepped inside. Clipped, all there was to it.

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

His lips pressed together in impatience and he sighed, training his arrogance on me as easily as a gun, “When have I ever been wrong?”

Which was as valid a point as any. We’d been in school together for years and I couldn’t recall a single time.

There was no more talking from then on. The door closed behind us and Simon kissed me without prelude, pouring everything into the act as if it were the last one he would ever commit. I wondered what was going through his mind, if he thought he was bartering sex for silence. If he thought he needed to.

It wasn’t the case, but it could have been. I could have flipped the lock, undressed, given him the choice of battling either his pride or the Alliance. Might have, if I’d been more lacking in scruples and reputation. I’m sure he must have known what he could have been getting himself into.

Soft skin and feather-light lips, hair clean and silky between my fingers. Not terribly worse for the wear, whatever he’d been up to these past few months. Mouth opening like a silent sigh, eyes closing gratefully; melting against me, but still steely underneath, taut as a tightrope and hyperaware of his surroundings. Well-adapted to his circumstances.

_Lao tian ye_, he was beautiful. Beautiful. There was no other word. I moved down between his legs, smoothed my hands over bare pale skin, took him in completely, made him gasp: winter-blue eyes closing, jet-black hair mussed between my fingers. I let him take me into his mouth in return; his head ducked down and I didn’t spare a single thought for the price on it.

Simon had always had the answer, cutting life apart with logic, taking everything into account. It was beyond me how he could still be doing that now, when surely nothing about his life could be predicted anymore. It must have been hell on him. Shaking against me, his brow furrowed, and I smoothed it out as well as I could, running my lips up the cords of his neck, running my fingers through that silky dark hair, twisting them in it. Slipped one, then two inside him and God, he clenched and shuddered even more then; he never could loosen up properly under pressure and I wasn’t quite able make him even then.

He wasn’t comfortable, face screwed up in pain; I had no clue whether he’d ever done anything like this before and wasn’t tasteless enough to call him out for it.

Some naïve part of my brain wanted to hear him beg, make him cry out and tremble and urge me to take him. But he never uttered a word, just shivered and sighed and arched into every time I laid a hand on him. He must have been craving touch, physicality, even though he’d never been one to actively pursue it in school. Legs tangling together, full and slick and hard up against his stomach, squirming delightedly and near laughing at his own reaction when I went about parting my mouth over the back of his neck. I gave him as much pleasure as he would allow himself to take, let him feel my gasps against his mouth, the heat of me inside him, making him wriggle and moan and stain his skin lotus-pink. Ending with him sprawled nude and trembling across the bed in a five-star hotel on my uncle’s tab.

At MedAcad, all of us had soldiered on through by popping stims to stay awake, spiking pots of Takashimaya Rose until our cups were half uppers and half actual tea, on but Simon never did. When we all heard about him, how he had started throwing money away on the black market in order to save his little sister from the hands of some government conspiracy, rumor had it he’d finally snapped.

“No one ever thought you would actually do it,” I told him, slipping back into my vest.

“Believe me, I’m well aware of that.”

I didn’t reply. We made it into the street again. Simon passed my tracker back over, studied the seams of his sleeve.

There was nothing more I could say. No sense in trying to tell him that he was brilliant, that he was strong, that he would pull through this mess even if he had no idea what he was doing, that he would manage to get by somehow. I stared straight ahead, squinting at the inane animation on a glittering billboard. “Maybe,” I admitted slowly, “we shouldn’t have doubted you.”

He turned to disappear into the street, then hesitated. “Don’t tell my parents you saw me. Don’t tell anyone.” Imperious, used to being obeyed and not used to taking no for an answer. And then he was swiftly swallowed by the crowd.

I had to wonder how long he would be able to keep running before some of that resolve finally fell away.


End file.
